I would like to attempt one last method to fix these multiple problems with the Orbi product.
Rather than complaining, and throwing away my $600 investment, perhaps the Netgear engineers and developers would be perceptive to suggestions which I am sure can resolve some (if not all) of these problems.
First, let me say Thank You!
Thank you for your attempts to create an appealing looking product. It doesn’t look like a science project gone wrong with 6 antennas and 10 LED lights. It doesn’t cause my guest to ask me, “What is that weird looking thing”.
Thank you for your attempts to innovate and solve the large home WIFI coverage problem.
Thank you for the speed. Yes, its fast!
With all that you made right, some portions of the Orbi product are missing the mark.
I believe I may know what you are overlooking.
You tried to create an EASY, SIMPLE, and high tech product that could be used by anyone, especially non-technical consumers. Unfortunately, what you “may” be missing is the reality that no one solution for WIFI exist for everyone. Therefore, other WIFI OEMs allow access to advance settings enabling consumer to tweak and tune the product to their specific use case and environment.
Homes, buildings come in a large variety of sizes, floor plans, building materials and other variables which can cause interference from other locations. Possibly home appliances and other devices which may not “play friendly” with Orbi, despite your best attempts to find the one configuration that works for everyone. It’s just not possible!
Hence, I ask of you. I plead with you. Beg of you! Stop trying to make Orbi work for everyone using your locked-in configurations. Allow some flexibility!
Here are my suggestions which have proven to be affective for all of you competitors. Many of these suggestions have been posted in your” ideas” area forum. We must assume you are too busy, or have somehow over looked these suggestions.
Allow the 2.4G and 5G radio SSIDs to be separated. All other OEMs which use any type of “smartconnect” ability allow that feature to be disabled. Because it doesn’t always work for EVERYONE. There are too many client devices in this world. 2 devices may work, and 2 may not. Allow this separation and it further removes the burden of band-steering. I can lock in my devices to a specific 2.4G or 5G band, and Orbi doesn’t need to worry about moving my devices to the other 2.4G radio. This should help with disconnects. It also allows Netgear to sell more Orbi Satellites. I would be inclined to buy an additional satellite so I have large 5G coverage, rather than moving to 2.4G. Let the user decide, as all your competition allows.
Allow Orbi node/device-steering to be completely disabled. The Orbi is Fast. VERY FAST! It should not be required to force client devices back to the main Orbi router. If my client device has a good connection to the satellite, then let it stay there, or move on its own if the RSSI drops beyond 75. Most modern devices handle roaming VERY WELL, and do not need your help. Don’t risk a client disconnect by forcing the device to move to the router. Please provide the option to disable all band-steering.
Please expose the client device, and Orbi Satellite device, RSSI, MCS Data Rate, connected radio, and which Orbi node its connected to. This will allow your users to have troubleshooting ability…AND it will allow better placements of the Satellites if you can show the “REAL” RSSI and MCS of the satellite connections. When a Satellite powers up and gives that white light showing a good connection. What it doesn’t tell you is how stable that connection is. I have two locations in my home that can cause random fluctuations in my signal strength. It will be good one moment, and not good 60 seconds later. I have been FORCED to use a Samsung Android Smartphone with WIFI Analyzer to determine the TRUE quality of a Satellite location because your product refuses to show any detailed information.
Please allow automatic updates to be DISABLED. Netgear suffers the same problem all manufactures experience. Sometimes you get it WRONG. Sometimes a code update causes more problems. Your customers should be allowed to choose if they want to update, or NOT. This can be resolved via Orbi light illuminations telling the user something needs to be performed. It can also be notified via the Orbi App. But it should be “notify first, then allow the user to accept or decline the update”. Your recent 1.9.x update has caused more problems than it solved. Further making the Orbi NOT SIMPLE.
And there are other “nice to have” features such as vLAN support for guest network. And others…But I would be happy see the above changes made.
These requests are ALREADY part of the command line, but using them is difficult, requires research, and should the user make any changes in the Web GUI, the command line changes are lost.
Please read this, and please make Orbi work. These changes should take no more than 2-4 weeks.
If a feature doesn't work, don't offer it. At some level, I am thinking that this is a version 1.OMG product. I should have known that when I bought it, but the marketing of the possibility was intriguing.
What I did find interesting is that some of the features I took for granted in my Nighthawk router simply are not present in the Orbi. And the features that are in the Orbi just don't seem to work as well as they do in the Nighthawk.
If I new i was giving up all those features and functions for the only feature of having a satalite wireless, I would have never purchased this product.
Prove me wrong Netgear. Make it work and implement the features that flash008 suggests.
I agree with most of your points and this is well stated. I do have one comment though. Band Steering is a good thing if done right. Most devices are very bad at roaming. This is why all Enterprise equipment has this feature and it tends to work very well in those environments. Granted they are adjusted based on the environment.
1.9.x has proven to make my WIFI in my home useless for all devices. I cant use SlingTV, WIFI calling or much of anything that requires a stable connection.
Netgear. Per my previous post, please open the Orbi advance options to allow us to tweak and tune this product to match our needs. You do not know my home, nor my devices, nor my enviroment and any other factors which may prove incompatible with your configuration.
I need control.
Asking me to disable beamforming, MU-MIMO, reduce power levels, and other changes, effectively disables the prime feature set of this product and is not a solution.
BMW asking me to not use anti-roll stability, iDrive, adapative cruise control, other special BMW features, and to keep it under 50MPH, somewhat defeats the purpose of owning a BMW.
1.9.x has proven to make my WIFI in my home useless for all devices. I cant use SlingTV, WIFI calling or much of anything that requires a stable connection.
Netgear. Per my previous post, please open the Orbi advance options to allow us to tweak and tune this product to match our needs. You do not know my home, nor my devices, nor my enviroment and any other factors which may prove incompatible with your configuration.
I need control.
Asking me to disable beamforming, MU-MIMO, reduce power levels, and other changes, effectively disables the prime feature set of this product and is not a solution.
BMW asking me to not use anti-roll stability, iDrive, adapative cruise control, other special BMW features, and to keep it under 50MPH, somewhat defeats the purpose of owning a BMW.
I tried rolling back 1.8.x yesterday and couldn't. It acted like it was going to work but when the Orbi came back up the version was still 1.9.1.12. Perrhaps you'll have better luck.
If you do, please provide the steps taken to do so.
When my wife (Mrs. dialup patience) notices a wireless problem it has to be bad.
Flash008. I think asking for things to be open might be a bit too much right now. How about they get things stable to start. Don't do anything else except fix wireless stability. Then maybe we can ask for the standard things that come in most home routers for the past 20 years. 😞
After rollback to 1.8.x I can report 2+ hours straight and not a single problem with SlingTV or WIFI calling (no more than usual with 1.8.x). Version 1.9.x was causing buffer and disconnect problems every 10-30 minutes.
To role back you only need to download 1.8.x files from Netgear Support site. Login to both Orbi router and satellite. Browse to the file and select upload.
It will ask if you want to "downgrade" from the newer version. Say yes. It will reboot and you should be on 1.8.x.
Understand, after reboot/downgrade it will indicate that new 1.9.x update is available. What I do not know is, "will Orbi auto update to 1.9.x again", without my permission. I guess I will know if my client devices begin miss-behaving again. I could block the Orbi IP addresses with my firewall, but then the Orbi lights will come on complaining about “no internet”!!!! I am also using AP mode, not router mode. Hence, blocking the Orbi IP will work for me, but not for someone using Orbi as the internet router.
What I mean is "OPEN" = advanced options to control band and Orbi device steering. And other advanced options found on most mid-high tier consumer WIFI routers/APs.
I highly suspect device and band steering is the main problem for disconnects. Also allow the 2.4G and 5G BSSID to be separated, along with disabling auto-updates. Look at 1.9.x and the problems it is causing. How do most non-techy users stop Orbi from updating to a code level that clearly should be pulled from the update servers?
So yes, OPEN may be the wrong word.
I sound like a broken record now. Maybe if I repeat the same thing 100 times Netgear will listen. HA HA HA! Did you hear about the kid you wrote a letter to Stanford with only, "Black Lives Matter" 1000 times. He got accepted. Finally, we know the secret to get the attention of large organizations.
I had to jump through hoops to get this to work. What ends up happening is the Orbi's will auto update themselves once they get online. I wrote up step by step what I did to block the updates in this thread. The section that reads How I solved my problem: outlines the steps I had to to do. Link of post is below.
You are further proof that a single configuration may work for some, but not all. But our “friends” at Netgear cannot get it through their thick heads that Orbi is too locked down.
Advanced settings and information need to be opened to the user, so I can find the configuration that works best for my home.
Great post for how to block auto-update. I will try that now. Thank You!
Shame this is required, and what solution exist for those who do not have third-party routers/firewalls. I guess it will suck to be them. Trapped on a bad code level until Netgear removes it or pushes a fixed code level.....So sad.
Fyi I am on yet another disconnect free day. Adding 3 more echo devices in today. No issues at all.
Probably not not the most complex network for a home. But 30 devices spread all over the house.. have a chromebook and a garmin fenix 5 on my wifi as well.
Please don't roll back.... just give people the option to block updates at least for a period of time.
Model: Orbi High-Performance AC3000 Tri-Band WiFi System (RBK50)
There comes a time when enough is enough. 2006 I decided that I would never purchase another linksys router after a catastrophic issue and months of going back and forth until they finally admitted an issue with their firmware.
2017 I decided to never purchase another Netgear product. Even though my nighthawk is a fairly good product, the tragedy and cost of this product reaches into the business class....and performs at the ghetto class. WTG Netgear. You lost this customer.
@Flash008Yeah it took me a bit to figure it all out. I'm just thankful my Asus router had the ability to block outbound traffic down to the port level and specific LAN device, I would've been screwed if I couldn't do that. I still want the ability to disable auto updates though. Let the system notify me when an update is available and if I run into issues let me roll it back.
@Ts937kmGlad to hear of your success. I wonder if you're still getting packet loss though. I ask because my problem was not disconnects. In fact my clients stayed connected with zero problems reported on the client side. My problem was that I would get packet loss at an interval of about 15-25 minutes. Sometimes for a few moments and other times for a few seconds. This may appear to be just general Internet lag to users but it is in fact a connection issue. It's not long enough to completely drop Internet or cause video to drop out since most Internet video is pre-buffered. I only noticed it because I have been gaming again lately. I started noticing random lag spikes at those intervals, 15-25 minutes, while playing Overwatch. Overwatch is very sensitive to dropped packets and will drop you from a game if you drop packets for several seconds.
I think my packet loss issue is a problem between the Orbi satellite and the base and not the clients. I believe this to be the case because none of my clients would drop off of WiFi nor would they complain about being offline.
It is very likely that the SlingTV buffer problems and disconnects could have been additionally related to packet loss, even though I run in AP mode. I did not test at that level. Again (Netgear), I have a life, family, hobbies, and spending countless hours troubleshooting your Orbi is not on that list.
What I do know is my SlingTV, WIFI Calling and other services which require stable connectivity are not happy for the most part going on 6+ hours since my role back to 1.8.x. Far better than the 1.9.x code level.
For those having success I am happy for them, but they only prove my point that one single "locked in" configuration may work for some, but not all.
Let us hope Netgear will surprise us and respond to this thread and give us hope they are listening, and perhaps will give their customers what they want.
I run mine in AP mode as well. I'm just genuinely curious if the issue is isolated to certain configurations/environments/hardware revision. Because it seems like the problems with this version are very mixed. I really wish I could just Ethernet to my desktop and be done with it but I can't.
